Surviving your Quarter Life Crisis and becoming an adult

The reality in life is that people are almost always too close or too far away.

Proximity invites conflict. Distance invites loneliness.

Distance is yearning, hope and no arms around you when you sleep. With distance you can be selfish, you can own yourself so completely there is no other reality than the one that exists in your head. It can be perfect and you can revel in the pain of the perfectionist, of the idealist, holding onto what comes next, of what could be. It also means that you secure yourself against the world. The other is being witnessed in highs and lows, in strength and weakness, in feeling each moment so strongly you lose common sense, your misery so sharp you forget to notice where it falls into joy, where you are mood, where you are passing through agony and bliss so rapidly you forget the movement exists at all.You also will make mistakes. Many of them, many many of them. Some because you can’t escape your head. Others because you can’t read minds.

The point of these endeavors is to get close to people because ultimately the best moments and worst moments in your life involved other people. It becomes clear that you can’t do this without invading someone else’s space. You can’t do it flawlessly because they have built up their own routines for how life can be safe, how distance can feel as secure as a warm blanket. You’ll get in their way. They will get in yours. You will attempt to please them. With time this runs out and you become simply awkwardly yourself. Because there really is no other choice after awhile. And sometimes you won’t be fun. Sometimes you won’t be interesting. All you need to do is not pull away so far that you can’t come back.

Sometimes you won’t want to be held. Sometimes you’ll need it like a child does, because you can’t get close to someone else without first getting close to yourself. And being that close can hurt. You feel those wounds you’ve avoided by living shallow. By letting your life be dictated by trivial things, by defining your moments purely by following your interests and obsessions, imagining your humanity was simply a TV screen to be filled with the latest programs and your voice simply a laugh track and Facebook status to be shared with the world.

It feels like going insane. Everything seems to have meaning attached to it. Every second has weight. When you are in their orbit. And the meaning falls away and is replaced with some other mood. Some other gust of wind. And it’s capricious and unreasonable as the weather where the lightning that strikes you may have nothing to do with you. There is that amazing sensation where you hear the rain falling in cascades and you know they can’t go inside yet and you grab your kite instead of an umbrella. Because you know tonight they get struck by lightning and you aren’t willing to let them do it alone.

When people are far away they can be perfect and so can you. This is why unrequited love hurt you so badly as a child. This is why we mythologize reunions and hide relationships in entertainment. We want the closeness that comes with catharsis. We don’t want the process of breaking that leads to catharsis. It’s easier to be a friend than to be a lover. It’s easier to watch the Olympics than compete in it. When I’m single I give advice to my friends in relationships and think they’re insane. So wrapped up in small issues. So stuck in their own head. Going into crisis and emerging from it with no memory. As though each salvation was special. As though each step forward a high dive miracle.

It’s easy to see it as insanity when you aren’t inside it.

Sometimes I think people who don’t go crazy have run too far away from life. Sometimes I think that completely rational people are unable to poop.

The experiment makes no sense to the scientist. But here was what I realize when I’m inside it. When I am close enough to people that I put my self into jeopardy. Those moments when I am just close enough to people, when they sneak further inside me than I thought they could have come as a result of constant company. Years disappear with the world on my periphery. I don’t remember. It’s when things that messy I remember. Because time slows down when you are close. You can feel the pressure of being seen, of noticing your own racing heartbeat, your own speeding thoughts, you can’t be numb like this, no matter how much you drink, how much you smoke, how much you pretend, it hurts to be this close because every cell in your body is alive.

You have to risk people getting too close to have them get close enough.

Or to put it yet another way, how close you are to life dictates how quickly it passes, how fully you remember it, how much meaning people have for you. With distance time barely exists, your memories are flimsy when not granted weight by pain and hope. By allowing someone close you can experience the very nature of time change. Space dictates time.

One of these moments came when I realized I was reacting against someone reacting passionately on the internet. Not what they were saying but that it had become their identity to say it.

Mainly because I’d seen this person react passionately to every item on the news cycle. Like his heart breaks every time he looks on the news and then realizes that people have been doing it wrong.As if this is his brand. As if this is his Tommy Hilfiger shirt and he’s lighting his shirt on fire because he realized that’s what looks cool like today. Sometimes it feels as if the medium has become so irritating the message has become irrelevant.

I wonder if I’m the only one suffering information overload. I’m wondering if I’m the only one who isn’t reacting to the news but the people giving me the news. Who instead of reacting to events reacts to people reacting to events. Like I’d like to feel angry or passionate about these issues but all I can feel is the need to conform rather than the genuine passion necessary to act. Like all I really hear is a desire to belong instead of hearing any level of real analysis to let me make up my mind. Maybe I’m starting to wonder where the people introducing the article end and the journalism begins when they seem to be written in the exact same tongue of vitriol, indignation and opinion. All telling me what to think. And who I am if I think differently.

The news feels like newspeak. Unsightly angles have been shaved off to make shapes fit better in cookie cutters. We rely on words like hate and love rather than the thousand more shallow cuts involved. We rely on stimulating emotions rather than thought.

And my people are the ones who miss words meaning what they actually mean. Who don’t want an article to change their whole lives. Who don’t think the internet was broken by a nice ass photographed in one magazine. Who feel like it was broken when commentators put a picture next to their statements and what you said became about who you wanted to be rather than who you are. Who missed the days when something had to be edited to be published.

Who wonder if maybe their passion died and they have become involved in semantics in a world that needs real change.

We are the ones who enter your Facebook argument and explain to you why they think you lost the point of your argument. Who write five pages and delete them and put in one sentence.

So there’s this joke I have been trying to word. It’s good. I mean I laugh. Sort of.

So this guy is experiencing low grade anxiety.

Nothing big. Just feels a bit like a teakettle collecting stem or a man about to scream into the face of a stranger on a bus.

He just wakes up and he wishes he could go back to sleep. Maybe his thoughts race a little. Maybe no matter what he does he keeps coming back to feeling a bit like a failure. He doesn’t like to think about this. He prefers to think about Doctor Who and how so many British actors could play the same man.

He figures there has to be something his doctor can deal with. Maybe his medication isn’t working. Maybe his thyroid is working a little too well or not well enough. Maybe he needs a lexus.

So he goes to his doctor, little dude, like two feet tall. But he seems big. The Doctor seems big I mean, not the guy, the guy is not really noteable height wise. But the Doctor, he stands on a stool and he yells at alot.Wears hats. And he has this deep voice. Like a cave is in his throat and everything he says echoes. And he is better at basketball than you’d expect. Anyways…..

Doctor checks him out. Looks in his throat. Looks in his ears. I don’t know why he does this. I don’t think you can see anxiety. Though I imagine it might be in your ears. Does a blood test. Nothing comes up. And they are flummoxed. I mean they look up that word in the dictionary and that is the only thing that describes their level of confusion.This just doesn’t make sense.

Then the Doctor casually decides to prescribe him a pill because he figures fuck it, this will make this unctuous tall bastard quiet down. The man blushes. Feels his heartbeat start to rise. He can’t afford medication. He is doing a calculation his head and it’s how much further down he can comfortably take his bank account into over draft.

The Doctor chuckles. “You don’t have depression. You’re unhealthy but not more than most tall bastards. You’re money sick.”

“What?”

“You need more money. Than you’d be happy.”

Money sick is a condition where you worry about money all the time. You feel embarrassed and shameful when asked about your life because you lack the proper amount of money to feel confident. You also take a lot about what you watched on netflix. Because socializing is the one expense you can cut out. And you don’t feel quite so alone when you’re watching enough TV. That’s how the doctor describes it. He asks the guy, “Are you watching enough TV”

Because if you watch enough TV you will be well armed for your social conversations. The ones that happen incidentally at work or at a coffee shop. Because other people are also money sick and have been watching their Netflix, the church that protects the world from the realization of their Great Depression. It’s that sense of collective doom you feel and the irritation yelled in your face in Facebook. It’s the smoke from the fire of helplessness. It’s money sick.

So the Doctor realizes he could just give the guy some money. A little bit.Then he realizes how high his taxes are. How expensive his first home is. And he decides to talk about that for a while. And then write a refill for the guy’s anti-depressants.

I don’t understand why people don’t want to give speeches at funerals. For me that would be a big moment. I would write the hell out of it. People would cry. People would cheer. I would momentarily be your grandmother’s hero.

I’m not saying I’m ghoulishly excited about the death of those close to me. I’m more concerned about what happens before death. The idea of no one inviting me to give a speech.

I’m not waiting to give a speech at your funeral. I’m just thinking about that disconnect where people are worried about public speaking rather than the loss of a connection with someone who is close enough to you that they would want you to speak at their funeral. There has to be a very few people who would want me to speak at their funeral. And I don’t think this is where my writing career is headed. I don’t want to be a freelance funeral speaker. I would obviously be very good at it.

What I want to focus on is how much we fear awkward conversations. Even though we know the people we love could die. How many times have we jettisoned meaningful relationships because we didn’t want to get in a fight with them about we feel they’ve mistreated us? Two hours of feeling uncomfortable or stop being friends with someone who loves us and for some reason annoys the fuck out of us at this particular moment?

My tendency is to let things drift.

If you are anything like me you fear arguments for a simple reason. You suspect this might just be the moment when someone reaches behind the curtain and grabs the little man working the wires, that terrified little midget that lurks at the heart of all humans, that inner child panicked and crying at adult life who is sure people understand how little he is able to live it. And then drag the little man around to meet everyone else you know. And suddenly you aren’t allowed to do your job. Or associate with your friends. Because you’re a fake. Because you don’t deserve it. And they might know you well enough to know it and explain it.

Or maybe not. Maybe you can somehow rationalize how bottling up your feelings will be beneficial to everyone. That the people around you have big enough problems that they don’t need to deal with yours. So instead of opening up, getting into an argument or serious discussion you quietly drift out of their lives forever. Because you’d rather let a relationship die than face your own culpability in the situation you find yourself in.

It’s interesting to me how we lose important connections because we don’t want to feel momentarily awkward. Because we fear not bad situations but confirming the truth of them. Think of all the people who stay married when the love is dead, who stay in friendships where they no longer have anything in common. Because we fear the truth. We think it might be truth etched out of the same poisonous material that makes up our minds.

We would rather be in a situation that is rotting and dying than have to suffer a surgery to excise the cancer. To learn that we don’t love perfect people. That they don’t love us because we are perfect. To learn that the more you love a person the more conflict you will experience.

This is inspired by nothing in particular in my own life. But a podcast considered to be the greatest podcast of all time. Where Mark Maron and Louie CK deal with the ups and downs of their close friendship. Where Mark Maron’s insecurities pushed him away from people who could note them.

I’m at a time of change. Where I’m striving with everything I have to reach my goals and as yet have little to show for the struggle. Where I don’t really want to talk about my life with people. Because I can see are at different places and I’m at a different place than I want to be. I wonder if this shame about my own life means that I’m not there for the people who need me. Because I don’t call because I don’t want to spend money that socializing entails. Because I am so concerned with getting where I want to be that I don’t check in to see where you are.

Well I love you. And I want to be there.

Even when my life isn’t great to talk about. I want to hear where you are at.

I don’t know why but no matter how much I like a person I don’t want to bump into them.

If I see all but my closest friends in a restaurant or coffee shop I will go out of my not to be noticed. I will read my book. I will type on my computer. I will go to the bathroom for as long as I possibly can.

I don’t understand this compulsion. I’m not shy. I don’t have any significant social anxiety. Some of the best conversations I have ever had happened in these exact circumstances. But the craving for great conversation doesn’t surface in my conscious mind. Instead I think I have plans and they have plans and I want not to have to change that.

I just hate running into people. At times you aren’t supposed to run into strangers. At a party we could talk because we are supposed to. If I run into you on a date with your girlfriend we may feel compelled to communicate because we both are sharing the same street at the same time. But we don’t want to. And I think of how to escape. For the good of both of us.

I hate running into people.

I know I’m not alone.

You were on your way somewhere. I am preventing you from going to the bathroom, having sex with your significant other or writing the next Great American novel. We weren’t supposed to see eachother right now. I don’t know why you are introducing me to someone I will never meet again. I don’t know why we have to catch up after ten years. We didn’t keep in touch. We don’t have anything in common. We don’t have issues that need to be addressed. You don’t want to tell me about your life. I don’t want to hear about it. Are you thinking how nice it would be to be able to fly? Don’t you wish you could jump into the air, flap your arms like wings and do what you were planning to do?

We both want to run.

I don’t know why.

Shouldn’t we be able to?

Why do I have to ask you about your life and make you confront the utter emptiness of your existence? Why do you have to ask about mine and make me remember the contents of my bank account? Wouldn’t it be if you just pretended my face had changed since I was a child? Can’t you just take off your glasses and not say hello to the blurry man with the bighead?

And if you aren’t a stranger but a friend can we talk at a time that we had previously planned on?

I’m reading a book. I’ll talk to you at a time that is more convenient for both of us.

What if that war you fight with yourself makes you part of the human race

What if your mistakes saved your friends from following in your footsteps

What if your utter exhaustation lead you to your dreams

What if you had a good heart and you performed a couple shitty surgeries to make sure it wouldn’t hurt like it did and you have to undo the damage by walking through agony and love was your reward

What if the pain you’ve lived with was a measure of the wisdom you’ve experienced

What if you had done things differently, if you’d been smarter, what if you didn’t have the friends you do, if I didn’t get a chance to get to know you, if you’d been more successful and we hadn’t had too many drinks and said inappropriate things

What if you weren’t insane, you were just getting to know yourself

What if sanity isn’t really being anyone, just making yourself a mould of what someone else wanted to make you

What if you couldn’t know anyone else until you stopped seeing yourself as some boat meant to take you somewhere else where you wouldn’t be, whatever the hell you don’t want to be that you are

What if the reason people struggle to connect with you isn’t your imperfection

Your weakness

But your inability to love yourself even if you have some opinions you disagree with

What if they have some opinions they disagree with

If their knee jerks when there’s lightning in the air and their reactions are also fucking stupid sometimes.

How could they expect to be loved for who they are when you can’t love you who are

What if all that unnecessary suffering wasn’t you choosing to hurt yourself

But trying to make your life better

And no one ever having really told you how to do that

What if all those things you want to get rid of were to go and you didn’t have any character left

I remember walking through a Freshco in my pajama pants on the phone with my dad trying not to cry. Also trying to find yogurt. But not mainly trying not to cry.

His voice was gentle and mine was fighting panic.

I did cry but we haven’t gotten there yet.

My house burned down the previous November and a girl I didn’t know died. Her name was Alisha.

For the first months after the fire I was trying to finish my movie, find a place to live, enjoying being in love for the first time in years. I felt like I was okay with it. I felt like I had dealt with at the time.

On my birthday I found out that I had to go back into my old house to get the film equipment we had left behind. Doing so felt cathartic. But in the back of my mind this terrible anxiety was growing. Each ordinary problem felt magnified. There was this deep sense that there had to be a reason my life felt so out of control.

And I am in the grocery store crying.

A few days earlier I had been telling someone about the movie I made. How my house burned a few days after. And they asked me if my film equipment had lead to an electrical fire.

And I felt this deep sickness building in my stomach. I said nothing for a few days. Just locked in this ironclad sense of shame. This belief that somehow I was responsible for the fire that burned down my home. That I had killed someone.

Inadvertently. By accident. With my dreams of being a writer.

I knew it was unreasonable, I also was scared that I believed it.

I called my dad because when I fall apart I call my dad.

He explained to me step by step how my fears were impossible. If the circuit was going to blow it would have happened during filming, if an electrical fire happened I was no more responsible than if I had simply plugged in my laptop, if the wiring was faulty it was the landlords fault. He was careful, he was thorough and he was convincing. And he was right.

And I was crying.

Part of trauma is a sense that you could have done something differently. A lingering guilt. A desire to protect yourself from ever feeling like this again. Telling someone about my fear marginally released the tension. Seeing a therapist gave me the perspective that I needed to be patient with my pain. And the tremendous tension lessened.

A week ago I went to a ceremony where butterflies were released to honour lost loved ones in High Park.

I met Alisha’s mother and father. I met her friends. I made awkward jokes and watched them crying feeling like a space alien watching Earthlings. I never feel things right away.

And I watched frozen butterflies try to fly into the warm heat of the sunlight running rampant through High Park.

It took a few days for it to hit me. To realize how close I came to my own loved ones being hurt like that. To see how one of the worst experiences of my life was infinitely worse for her mother and father and her friends. And that type of pain makes you crack a bit inside. The safe walls crumble. The feelings go places you don’t want them to go.

I wanted somehow to be able to make them ok.

I remember that walk through the grocery store. The panic and the relief. How my desire for a simple explanation as to why bad things happen to good people forced me to my knees.

I wanted my dad to somehow be able to explain it to them like he explained it to me. It’s not your fault. Bad things happen. I know it feels horrible but this isn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done.

The tears that fell down my cheeks were from relief and release. That maybe I could let go. I hope that the tears that fell down their cheeks as butterflies left their palms were the same type of tears.

And I still want an easy answer.

I don’t want to have to make peace with a hundred times. I want to be able to control it. I want to be able to control how I feel.

Only I can’t.

Human life is fragile. People love you and would be shattered by your absence. Each moment we live is lucky. It hurts that we can’t control our feelings anymore than we can prevent tragedy from taking what is irreplaceable.

There is nothing wrong with feeling pain when the world is incredibly unfair. There is nothing wrong with losing a little patience with yourself when you suffer more than you’d like.

From my own experience I’d recommend picking up the phone and sharing the thoughts you’d like to keep hidden with someone who loves you. They might be able to carry it a little bit better. They might be able to lighten the load.

You might feel better. Even if you’re weeping in a grocery store in your pajamas. Even if they are out of the yogurt you were looking for.

Brief Intro: Sorry for the Upworthy style title. I just feel like people should read this. Because my friend said some important things and he said them well. I’m not super close to Ken Thomson. We went to school together. We may have talked about a few geeky things because like me he is a geek. He had a great beard and that was about all I really knew about him. Besides he could write. And we graduated the same year from university and apparently we’ve had similar feelings when we went through Facebook feeds and saw what seemed to be a legion of our friends finding success as we were a little embarrassed by our own lives. We also both live with depression. His story is about wanting to kill himself and seeking out a friend who could help when he most needed it. It brought tears to my eyes. Because he talks about a lot of things many of us go through that we can’t put into words. I was blown away by his bravery. I expect you will be too.Michael KimberKenneth ThomsonSeptember 2nd, 2014A month ago I was ready to kill myself, and had Kylee not opened her door when I showed up unannounced that Saturday, I very well might have.

This is a hard thing to admit, to having been suicidal, especially so recently. I have been worried about saying anything for fear that now everyone will think of me as some delicate flower, or some object of pity, or an attention seeking drama queen, or that people will just walk away, because why invest in something that might be gone soon? And when you’re surrounded by people who are achieving things in their lives and careers its embarrassing to say “I can’t even get out of bed some mornings,” let alone “I just want to not be alive” when they’re buying homes and starting families. So I’ve been a bit distant lately, but a weekend with some friends changed that, I think.

I’ve been depressed for years. Probably longer than some of you have known me. And I think I’ve been anxious for probably longer. Since June I’ve been on medication, seeking counselling, and I’ve been given a handful of self-help books (thanks Su, Robyn & Chuck).

It was really easy to ignore it all for so long. Not that the signs weren’t there. I’ve spent years seeking out shit jobs because I simply don’t think I deserve a job that could make me happy, especially when everyone else is simply better. I started smoking because it’s the only socially accepted way to kill yourself. I have a selfish attitude towards relationships. I find a flaw in everything. I’ve been avoiding social situations because I just figured I’m a miserable bastard and who would want that around? I’ve had an e-mail drafted to a friend for over two years. I kept saying “once I have something good to say, I’ll finish it off and send it.” Two years. Getting a good night’s sleep has been hard for a year now, at least.

Recently, and probably much longer than that, it all started really affecting my relationships with others. I was getting short with people, so many little things would just piss me off. The performance anxiety in the bedroom did me very few favours with the ladies or my confidence. I watched myself systematically destroy a dear friend’s trust in me, because how dare they be happy when I’m not. To top it all off I had a day where I physically could not leave my house. I just couldn’t face the world.

I went to the doctor, got some medication and an appointment with mental health. I quit my job, which just felt like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. But as “happy” as i seemed, i still couldn’t sleep well, and my thoughts when I had a few seconds alone turned instantly negative. And then I ended up back at, essentially, the same job. My one little victory that I was clinging to was taken away from me.

After a few days of feeling absolutely miserable, as in the only feeling I could feel was misery, I gave up. I can’t think of a better way to describe it than I just gave up. I started to resent my connections to other people, because it would make me such a selfish bastard to do myself in. If there was no one it would be so easy. When I was at the Buskers, surrounded by happy people and I just couldn’t relate to the world. Smiling seemed like a foreign concept. While walking home I knew when I got there I was going to hurt myself, I knew how I was going to hurt myself (it involved the mirror, which probably says a lot about how I regarded myself at the time), and I knew I like to finish what I start. This is the hardest thing to say: this felt good. It felt so good to finally feel like I had total control of my life.

I don’t know what happened, but walking across the Commons some sort of survival instinct kicked in and I turned towards Kylee’s apartment. I knew she was around that weekend, I knew no one else could get to me in time, and I knew I trusted her. I did not have her phone number so I just buzzed her and hoped to fuck she would answer. She did. Thank god. Just having someone there, at that moment, was the most important thing. She brought me along for the night and I actually enjoyed myself a little.

I made a few, tentative, attempts to reach out to other people that night. Not that Stephanie on the West Coast could do much, but Robyn invited me out the next night for Shane’s birthday. It was nice to see Shane, someone who always seems happy to see me because, I don’t why actually, but it’s nice. And dear Joel has been an absolute peach through all this.. There were one or two bad days the following week and a phone call to the Mental Health Crisis Line, but since then it’s been better.

I’ve told a few people now, and they’ve all been supportive. My medication has been doubled. I’m getting more sleep, like almost the recommended amount. I think my overall mood has been improving bit by bit. Not that I would say I’m “happy” but I certainly want to keep living. I really do. Maybe that’s the hardest thing to say: I want to live.

This is such a weird place to put this, but writing tends to help me organize my thoughts, and why write if no one is going to read it? I’m certainly not writing it for my own amusement. (That’s what my notebooks full of poetry and plays are for). And I guess I just want people to know that maybe this is why sometimes I don’t respond to messages or don’t show up to parties, because it’s just been so hard to face existing some days.

So this is where I’m at right now; bad but getting better. I hope everyone’s summer was better than mine, haha.

I don’t know if I find it poignant. I saw a very similar message from a friend earlier. I think it’s sort of cliche that when a celebrity dies we attach a quote from a movie they made as an expression of their personality and our knowledge of them. Yet we don’t actually know what he was going through. A lot of suicidal thought is a chemical sensation and it passes. That many of us experience and feel pass us by. Where much of our life remains beautiful and worth living. To say having bipolar disorder and drug addiction makes life no longer beautiful or worth having is to minimize the beauty of the lives of people who live with those pains as we all live with pain. So to say he is free, is to say he is in a better place, is to say that a terrifically bad and conceivably long mood is not worth suffering through to live isn’t poignant to me. It’s a minimization of the pain his family goes through, and ultimately it is clever because he was in that movie and that is a line in that movie and because it is a line in a Disney movie it must somehow be a truth worth clutching to in a time where death needs an instant response rather than a moment of silence. When someone dies we have an automatic response. When Mike Meyers has a child we say, “Yeah baby.” When an actor dies we quote a movie they were in. When a musician dies we quote a song lyric. Automatic responses are the actions of robots. When I told a few people at a cofee shop that Robyn Williams had died they responded automatically, “I never liked his movies” and “he probably killed himself because he wasn’t famous anymore”. This is obviously different but just as automatic of a response. This Huffington post article displays our societies desire to respond instantly, and declares Evan Rachel Wood the winner of the grief contest. It’s pretty fucked that we do this everytime a celebrity dies.

Introduction to the Cure

Peter Diamond Gallery

About

Michael Kimber is a 26-year-old journalist who suffered a nervous breakdown on November 3rd, 2009. On March 28th, 2010 when he recovered from mental illness, he began writing a blog called Colony-of-losers. About falling on your face to figure out who you are and the hilarious antics of a blond jew. What began with a few friends and his mother reading has become a cult phenomenon, averaging 10,000 views a week, receiving praise from Commonwealth Award Winner Shandi Mitchell and many others. On, November 3rd, 2010, the one year anniversary of his mental breakdown he signed with Anne McDermid and Associates, the largest literary agency in Canada. In a year he went from wearing pajamas, making his couch depression HQ to leaving his hometown for the Toronto, where he exclusively wears business suits and the armor of ancient Greeks. Don't worry, he's still choking on the feet he contently sticks in his mouth and making moments awkward just by being part of them. During these struggles he met other talented bastards and drew them into his circle. Peter Diamond became his illustrator. Patrick Campbell his video editor and part time photographer. He recently added the incredibly talented John Packman as Colony of Losers Toronto photographer. Without the support of the Colony of Losers, Michael Kimber would be nothing. Welcome to the losers and the success that comes from utter and complete failure. You aren’t alone. Follow him on twitter.com/colonyoflosersand twitter.com/quimbo. If you’d like to hire him for a public speaking engagement for mental health events in Toronto, like to arrange an interview, offer millions to publish his book or for another reason contact Michael please email him. And join his facebook Colony of Losers.